Pharaonic Ambitions: Obelisks in Rome
I: The Lateran Obelisk
Rome famously has more standing obelisks than all of Egypt. Carved from Aswan granite eight are of ancient Egyptian manufacture and five were made during the Roman Empire, elaborate knock offs replete with dodgy hieroglyphs. All were floated on barges down the Nile past crocodiles and hippopotamuses before being loaded onto sea going ships at Alexandria and successfully crossing the Mediterranean (how many ships languish on the sea bed?). Upon arrival at the mouth of the Tiber they were transferred once again to river barges and floated up the amenably slow-moving river, the barges pulled by beasts of burden trudging along the river bank.
The creation of obelisks in the first instance—quite literally a pharaonic moving of mountains— was a very tangible expression of might centuries before Rome was but a semi-legendary collection of shepherds’ huts rooted in hazy myth. To move the already ancient and vast stone needles across continents was an extraordinary and audacious undertaking which advertised the power of the “Empire without end”, and placated the nagging knowledge that Rome was very much the new kid on the block of Mediterranean civilisations.
The last of these obelisks to be brought from Egypt is also the first I came across when I arrived in Rome on the last Saturday of the first January of the new millennium for, I thought, six months.
